Joseph Ellis: the Vietnam wannabe

[After a year of "reflection and repair" (in the words of Mt. Holyoke's
president), Professor Ellis was welcomed back to the classroom
in September 2002. The reflection, presumably, was on the part of
Ellis, while the repair was to Mt. Holyoke's tarnished image.
-- Dan Ford]

What an amazing story. Here's the Ford Foundation Professor of History at
Mount Holyoke College, winner of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize
winner, best-selling biographer of The Founding Brothers, and leading
proponent of the theory that Thomas Jefferson fathered black slaves -- exposed as a
fraud!

Claiming to have been a platoon leader in the Vietnam War with the
101st Airborne Division, he kept Mount Holyoke students and faculty members
spellbound with yarns of his adventures in 'Nam. In fact, he spent his
entire military career lecturing at West Point. (He got a reserve commission
in 1965, presumably through ROTC, but was allowed to defer service for
four years while working on his doctorate.)

More than that, he apparently also lied about enlisting in the
anti-war movement after he got home, about helping David Halberstam
write The Best and the Brightest, about his experiences in the
civil-rights movement of the early 1960s, and even about his high-school
football career.

Where this really gets interesting is the fact that Ellis loaned his name
and position to the theory that Thomas Jefferson was the father of
some of the children of Sally Hemings, girlie slave. This story, you may
remember, broke on the eve of Bill Clinton's impeachment by the U.S.
House of Representatives for lying about his sexual liaison with a
21-year-old intern. Hey, said the spin doctors--no big deal! Everybody does
it! Look at Thomas Jefferson--he fathered slaves!

Ellis was up front about the parallel. Here's what he wrote on
the subject: "President William Jefferson Clinton also has a vested
interest in this revelation.... Jefferson has always been Clinton's
favorite Founding Father. Now, a sexually active, all-too-human Jefferson
appears alongside his embattled protege. It is as if Clinton had called
one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to
testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential
pedigree. The dominant effect of this news will be to make Clinton's
sins seem less aberrant and more palatable. If a vote against Clinton
is also a vote against Jefferson, the prospects for impeachment become
even more remote."

(It turned out that the proof of Jefferson's dalliance was much less
convincing than Ellis made it appear at the time. His co-author,
pathologist Eugene Foster, told the British science journal Nature
that the DNA evident hadn't proved Thomas Jefferson fathered any of Sally
Hemings's children. It merely showed that he was one of twenty-five
males in the Jeffersonclan who might have been the father.)

As a comical sidebar, given the way matters have turned out, Ellis
even criticized Jefferson for shirking the defense of his country:
"Jefferson ... doesn't become a soldier. He is young enough to do so.
Many of his friends are doing that. And, truth be known, he is criticized
within the Virginia aristocracy for shirking his duties.... He had been
elected governor of the state, and in that
period of time when he is governor, Virginia is invaded by a British
army and Jefferson himself is chased out of the capital and they burn
the capital around him. He flees to Monticello. And the stories at the
time were that Jefferson was a coward.... When he runs for
office later on, they keep calling this moment back to him that he
didn't serve. It would be like now if somebody missed service in
Vietnam, and basically being told, Where were you when it was time
to be counted?" [boldface added].

When the Boston Globe outed Professor Ellis, Mount Holyoke
leaped to his defense: "Professor Joseph Ellis is one of the most respected
scholars, writers and teachers in the nation," said prexy Joanne Creighton.
She questioned the newspaper's motivation and said the school is
"proud to have him on our faculty." Later, Creighton backpedaled
and promised an investigation, which resulted in a year's suspension
for Ellis.

Ellis himself had the following to say, before disconnecting his
telephone: "I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming
the assumption that I went to Vietnam. For this and any other distortions
about my personal life, I want to apologize to my family, friends,
colleagues and students. Beyond that circle, however, I shall have no
further comment." How about that?

In a letter to the New York Times, a colleague came to Ellis's
defense, arguing that the fact that he's a liar in his personal life in
no way invalidates his historical writings. To say otherwise, the good
prof declared, is to engage in "the politics of personal destruction."
Ellis's publisher, the very respectable firm of Knopf, argues that his
fakery is a "personal crisis" that doesn't "bleed over" into his
professional life.

What's this all about? Why has the Ellis story received so little
attention in the mainstream media? Why does Ellis get a free pass
for an offense that would ruin a physicist or a Republican congressional
leader?

No doubt it has much to do with the fact that Ellis was an absolute
prize for the folks who dodged military service in the 1960s, and who now
rule the thinking at Mount Holyoke and the New York Times. All the
good people are against the Vietnam War--that goes without saying. But
here's something even better: Joseph Ellis is not merely against the Vietnam
War, but he served heroically in it! He was a war criminal! And best of all,
he repented and became an anti-war activist! He became one of us,
Muffy! It's hard to see one of your prize exhibits go down in flames.